“Of course. I was sorry yesterday that I didn’t see you Friday night. I always miss my chance and I’m always sorry afterward.”
“You could come over now.”
“I don’t think I can, Bill. I’m afraid to say yes because I couldn’t stand myself if I stood you up again, and I’m afraid that’s what would happen.”
“Well, maybe some other time.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What are you going to do now?”
“Have dinner.”
“I mean after that. You had the expectation of having sex with me and then you didn’t get to. You must be, I don’t know.”
“Frustrated? A little.”
“Will you call someone else?”
“I don’t think so. Not tonight. I’ll probably just jerk off.”
“Are you joking?”
“No. Why?”
“Will you really do it?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Do you often?”
“Not often. I used to. Now I usually have something better to do, but if I’m in the mood and there’s no one handy. Don’t you ever do it?”
“Every night.”
“Then—”
“Do it now.”
“Huh?”
“Do it now. Over the phone. Do it and talk to me while you’re doing it. Tell me what you’re doing, what you’re thinking about. How it feels.”
“Sure.”
“God. All at once I’m so hot. So fucking hot. The strangest thing. Tell me what you’re doing. Are you naked? Do you have a hard on? Is it big and hard? Are you touching it? Tell me, tell me.”
The most extraordinary thing. I was completely out of myself. He told me everything he was doing. He said he had my image in his mind as he played with himself. He said he could feel my lips around the end of his cock. He told me how his excitement was peaking, and when he was going to come, and he moaned and cried out when he came.
I came without touching myself. A full and honest orgasm seconds after his.
He enjoyed all this. Said it was freaky and kinky and he liked it. Got real pleasure out of the scene that he would not have gotten masturbating by himself. But we didn’t talk much afterward. I was drained, couldn’t talk. Went and soaked mindlessly in the tub. Dried off, sat down, typed this.
I’m to call him tomorrow. There are things we can do, he says. Things that will thrill me without frightening me. Things that will let me remain an outsider. His word for it.
Why it worked, maybe: I was watching him jerk off. And I was invisible. A fantasy realized.
For the first time it seems faintly possible that I am perhaps gradually and tentatively becoming Jennifer.
8 March — Monday
I called him after work. He told me things about myself that I probably knew before. That I do not want to have my flesh touched because I do not want to have myself touched. To have myself known.
Knowledge. Adam knew Eve. I do not wish to be known, in the usual or in the biblical sense. (And the point is that both meanings of the word are identical. To fuck is to know, to be fucked is to be known. I am secret and invisible and not to be fucked.)
I had been thrilled yesterday, hadn’t I? Yes, I said, of course. His acts thrilled me, didn’t they? And I could enjoy them because I was not a participant in them, couldn’t I?
Yes, of course.
He asked if I would like to watch him in person. If I would like to see him naked. He would enjoy masturbating in front of me. He will not touch me, will demand nothing from me. I can watch. I can touch myself or not, as I please.
It is a quarter after nine now. We arranged that I would come over to his place at ten o’clock. I went out to dinner and bought a bottle of Scotch on the way home. Filled a water glass half with whiskey and half with water. I’ve been sipping it. It’s almost gone now.
I don’t much like the taste. Maybe it would be better with bottled spring water. The tap water is terrible and I can taste it through the whiskey. I ought to use bottled water all the time. The tap water makes awful coffee. It seems irksome, though; to have to pay for water when you can get it free from the tap.
If the whiskey affected me at all, I haven’t noticed it yet. I’m not nervous but wasn’t nervous before. Excited but not nervous. I trust him. I trusted him before but not down inside as I do now. I feel safe with him because I truly know now that it is my response that turns him on, my enthusiasm and excitement that delights him.
Time to end this and go. I should have something very interesting to write tomorrow. I’m almost afraid to find out what he’s like in person. I have a picture of him, vague in definition but real to me. Suppose his appearance turns me off? What then?
A cover, I guess, for my real reservation: Suppose my appearance turns him off?
What then?
9 March — Tuesday
We did not turn each other off.
It’s been raining all afternoon and evening. There was still snow at the curbs from the other day, and the rain at least is washing it all away. But it’s been a gloomy day and it’s a gloomy night.
I had a drink tonight when I got home from the office. I was right — it tastes much better with bottled water. I picked up a jug of Great Bear water. It was cheap enough, really. I made coffee a little while ago and the difference was remarkable.
I don’t think one drink a day when I get home from work will do me any harm. Or any good either, probably, but it seems a nice and civilized custom. I’m sure I’m in no danger of becoming a real drinker. I don’t get that kind of a kick out of it.
10 March — Wednesday
We did not turn each other off.
I believe I started yesterday’s entry with that sentence, and then I lost the handle and started bitching about the weather. It’s better to do that, though, than to skip a day entirely. I have to make this diary an absolute part of the routine or it will become easy to rationalize skipping first a day and then two days and then abandoning it entirely. I must at least put something down, if I do nothing more than type the notation that I am in no mood to write anything. Or else this diary will fail its purpose.
Whatever its purpose is.
And whatever good it may be doing.
Something is doing good. Or doing harm. Something is either making my life improve or opening the gates to ruin. I am on either the right or the wrong track, and while I am none too confident which it is, or confident at one time but not consistently, I still think...
Oh, hell. Better to be on a track, for better or for worse, than to live out one’s life on a siding. Better twenty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Better to have failed one’s Wassermann test than never to have loved at all. Better to be rich and healthy than to be poor and sick. Better bitter batter butter biter bit.
Get down to it, dammit.
Things Bill is not: handsome, dynamic, charismatic. Things he is also not: disquieting, upsetting, nervous-making.
Things he is: pleasant in looks, voice, manner. Better- looking clad than unclad, slightly potty at the belly, skin white with New York pallor. The concentration on appearance is because one expects dramatic beauty, mentally endows him with these features on the basis of a telephonetic relationship. It was not that I was disappointed. Adjusted at once to the new reality.
And reality is the key word here. Yes, definitely. Eyes on him as he drew the door ajar, welcoming smile on his face, eyes blue and bright and alert, and he became real. Scary, that. Talking to him while seeing him, hearing him directly with no phone wires between us.
His eyes are his best feature, a benefit unexpected; the fantasy I’d evolved to complement the telephone voice had less reassuring orbs.